THE ELECTORATE

It is disheartening to read of the continuing--and too often successful--Republican efforts to disenfranchise many voters who would likely support their opposition.  It seems these people will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, including the subversion of the American values they so loudly tout.  Added to their massive fund-raising base, now liberated from constraint by the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision, these efforts bode ill for democracy in this country--an ideal already tarnished by the power of plutocrats.  These people know how to exploit red-meat issues like taxation and the second amendment in order to distract attention from their hunger for control and ever greater wealth.  The coming election will reveal the extent to which they have succeeded.  Only if the electorate awakens from its collective stupor and mindless gullibility will Obama be re-elected.  Reading excerpts from Romney's "foreign policy" speech in today's newspaper, along with his other pronouncements on matters of importance, I find the alternative to be almost unimaginably dire.